Sorry, I have been making quite extensive notes on all this. I hope I can read my own writing in a moment.
I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. These issues are critical to how this part of the Bill moves forward. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned that neighbourhood plans have been very successful, despite the considerable scepticism at the time that they were launched. We absolutely agree with that, but, again, it is really important that we deliver more homes in these areas. I thought that his point about neighbourhood plans awaiting sign-off, how they would interact with the new proposals and that practical way of moving forward with community groups that have started doing some really good work on this, was very important. His idea about that transition was a point very well made. I know that the Minister has taken all of this on board, and we very much appreciate that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said her amendment was an extension to my Amendment 231 about national parks and AONBs. While I absolutely support her desire to see more affordable housing in those areas, I am not sure that restricting it to just affordable housing is the way forward. You need a mixed tenure to encourage social mobility, to encourage
families to move in and so forth. However, having affordable housing as a strong priority needs to be looked at.
To come back to the comments that the Minister made, I absolutely agree with her that it has been a success story, and where it has worked well it has worked really well. I was pleased that the Minister acknowledged that take-up has been low in some parts of the country, and it was very interesting to hear about the pilot schemes she talked about, in places such as Birmingham. It will be interesting to look at the outcomes. There are always lots of pilot schemes and then nothing ever happens, but, if they are successful, it would be great to see how the Government will then pick it up and run with it, and roll it out in other parts of the country. From a personal point of view, I am interested to hear more about that as we go forward.
It was good to hear more about the role of the neighbourhood priority statements, and to have it confirmed that there will be formal input into local plans and that they could operate as a preliminary plan, as a step on the way to a full plan. All of that was really good to hear.
One thing I would like to pick up a bit more is the issue of rural exception sites. It seemed that the Minister said that we do not need to have the amendments around national parks and AONBs because we have the rural exception sites, which are small sites that are used for affordable housing. I refer the Minister to concerns from the CPRE that the system is open to abuse. If this is what the Government see as the future of developing affordable housing in areas such as national parks, it is important that the opportunity for abuse is understood and that those loopholes are closed.
If noble Lords bear with me, I will refer to an example that the CPRE has put forward from Mid Sussex District Council. It is looking at a particular developer which has been seeking to persuade Mid Sussex District Council to treat two of their sites as rural exception sites for planning application purposes. In each case, the developer was offering to build at least 85% affordable homes. The problem is that neither site had been identified as appropriate for development. In neither case had this developer identified that its proposals would satisfy a local housing need, and the developer had not consulted with either the council’s housing department, the parish council or local residents. The CPRE is saying that the danger of abuse lies in the risk that, once the principle of development in rural locations has been established, a developer can then seek to exploit that fact to obtain permission for a far larger commercial development of market homes there. That is what happened in Lower Horsebridge, which is a village of 60 homes near Hailsham. The developer got permission for 32 affordable homes, and then returned with a revised application for 110 market homes, which was given planning permission.
I do not have any problem with rural exception sites; they do some really good work. However, if this is what the Government are going to rely on for that kind of development, it is really important that we look at how that loophole can be closed, so that developers cannot use them for their own advantage in that way.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage has reminded me that the localism commission, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has some really good recommendations about how to build community capacity around local development plans. Perhaps as we go through the Bill it would be worth looking at the work that has been done there. Having said all that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
10.15 pm